LETTER: Crazy situation

Your letters

Published:12:22Friday 10 March 2017

Share this article

I am writing to bring your attention to the farce that ignores the will of the people, will reduce the quality of life and will ultimately destroy many greenfield sites, in the Mid Sussex area, in the name of housing.

It has come to my attention that the developers who won the opportunity to build 40 houses on Birchen Fields are looking to increase this number to 48.

This is the start of the process by developers to ignore the neighbourhood plan and comes on the back of the Planning Inspector’s request to increase the housing stock build rate in Mid Sussex by 28 per cent from 800 to 1026 per year.

This is a crazy situation. The neighbourhood plan, which took years of consultation and effort, and won approval through a public referendum (yes - remember those? the will of the people?) It goes to show what a waste of time and effort that was when it has been ignored by the planning inspector and housing minister.

The biggest issue for me is that MSDC, obviously calculated the required support services for the housing build rate in its Neighbourhood plan. If this is now to be increased by 28 per cent where will the corresponding increase in doctors, hospitals, schools, teachers, roads, and police come from?

None of this is planned or budgeted for. It will certainly take years to put into place.

In the meantime we will have to continue to suffer shortages in services, which are already under severe strain.